Tenderness as More-Than-Human Relationaliy in Pernille Abd-El Dayem’s Omsorgsdage
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v34i69.160693Keywords:
Tenderness, Care, Affect theory, More-Than-Human Relationality, Pernille Abd-El DayemAbstract
In this article, I explore tenderness as a concept in aesthetics that relates to both care and vulnerability. Arguing that tenderness is currently a central sensibility in contemporary Nordic literature and art, I define it as a relation of openness, sensitivity, and curiosity between the subject and sensuous stimuli from its surrounding environment. In an affective reading, I show where moments of tenderness as an affective relation arise in the short story collection Omsorgsdage by Pernille Abd-el Dayem (2022). I argue that the scenes of tenderness in these stories create spaces of disinterested empathy that do not serve other narrative purposes than existing in the text as reflective spaces of sensitivity and relationality which potentially act as a commentary on the need for more of these spaces in society.
References
1 Pernille Abd-El Dayem, Omsorgsdage (Gyldendal, 2022).
2 Jonas Eika, Efter solen (Gyldendal, 2018).
3 Jonas Eika and Rolf Sparre Johansson, “Korrespondance,” Obvidat Magasin 1 (2019).
4 See, among others, the motivation for awarding Abd-El Dayem the Strunge Prize in 2019: https://presse.gyldendal.dk/en/PressReleases/Forfatteren%20Pernille%20Abd-El%20Dayem%20tildeles%20aarets%20Michael%20Strunge-pris (accessed August 14, 2025).
5 Tue Andersen Nexø, “Sandheden er Enkel og Krigerisk: Engageret Litteratur og den Politiske Brug af det særligt Litterære,” in Litteratur i brug, ed. Anne-Marie Mai (Forlaget Spring, 2019), 184–207.
6 Katherine Stewart, Ordinary Feelings (Duke University Press, 2007).
7 Eika and Johansson, “Korrespondance.”
8 “Ømhed er erfaringen af at være blevet berørt af noget, som overstiger en uden at ødelægge en, og som stadig er der efter berøringen er hørt op. Det fremkalder noget, som man allerede havde i sig, og giver en lyst til at give det videre. Når man taler ømt, taler det andet, som berørte en, også. Når man bliver berørt ømt, berøres man også af det, der gjorde den anden øm. Ømheden forbinder. Øm er man aldrig for sig selv.” Eika and Johansson, “Korrespondance.”
9 “Ømhedsaktivistisk Manifest,” 2022.
10 “Ømhedsaktivisme er ikke i opposition til demonstrationer, tilråb, fysisk mobilisering, men en udvidelse af protestmetoderne. Et alternativ til den vrede, handlende protest.” “Ømhedsaktivistisk Manifest,” 2022.
11 Ann Jurecic, “Is Teaching Empathy Possible?,” in Narrative Medicine in Education, Practice and Interventions, ed. Anders Juhl Rasmussen, Anne-Marie Mai and Helle Ploug Hansen (Anthem Press), 25–37.
12 Gregers Andersen, Climate Fiction and Cultural Analysis. A New Perspective on Life in the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2020); John Thieme, Anthropocene Realism (Bloomsbury, 2023); Jens Kramshøj Flinker, “Den Skandinaviske Cli-fi: En Ny Genre i Antropocæn?,” Spring 42 (2018): 41–66.
13 See among others, Alyson Cole, “All of Us Are Vulnerable, But Some Are More Vulnerable than Others: The Political Ambiguity of Vulnerability Studies, an Ambivalent Critique,” Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory 17, no. 2 (2016): 260-277; Erinn Gilson, The Ethics of Vulnerability: A Feminist Analysis of Social Life and Practice (Routledge, 2014); Aastha Mishra, “Reflections on the Value of Vulnerability: Towards aRelational Understanding of Vulnerability with Ethics of Care,” International Journal of Philosophy and Social-Psychological Sciences 4, no. 4 (2019): 31–38; Rosi Braidotti, “Affirmations versus Vulnerability: On Contemporary Ethical Debates,” Symposium 10, no. 1 (2006): 235–254; Per Nortvedt, “Subjectivity and Vulnerability: Reflections on the Foundation of Ethical Sensibility,” Nursing Philosophy 4, no. 3 (2003): 222–230; Xin Mao, “The Three Faces of Vulnerability,” Journal of Theoretical Humanities 25, no. 1-2 (2020): 209–221.
14 Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (Verso, 2009), 31, see also Judith Butler et. al., ed., Vulnerability in Resistance (Duke University Press, 2016).
15 Emanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Duquesne University Press, 1998 [1974]).
16 Psychological research suggests that tenderness is evoked in an individual when another being or thing is perceived as vulnerable, leading to the wish to care, see David A. Lishner et. al., “Tenderness and Sympathy: Distinct Empathic Emotions Elicited by Different Forms of Need,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 37, no. 5(2011): 614–625.
17 James Thompson, Care Aesthetics: For Artful Care and Careful Art (Routledge, 2023).
18 Yuriko Saito, Aesthetics of Care: Practice in Everyday Life (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022).
19 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, (Harvard University Press, 1982). See also Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (University of California Press, 1984).
20 Joan C. Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care, (Routledge, 1993); see also Susan J. Hekman, Moral Voices, Moral Selves. Carol Gilligan and Feminist Moral Theory (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995).
21 Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse, trans. Richard Howard (Hill & Wang, 2001 [1977]), 224–225.
22 Olga Tokarczuk, “Nobel Lecture: The Tender Narrator.” https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2018 /tokarczuk/lecture/ (accessed August 10, 2024).
23 In the dictionary empathy is described as “the ability to share someone else’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s situation” (Cambridge Dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/empathy), whereas with the disinterested type of empathy I am alluding to here, it does not necessarily arise by a comparison between subject and object but out of curiosity as to the uniqueness of the object in question.
24 Jean-Michel Ganteau, The Ethics and Aesthetics of Vulnerability in Contemporary British Fiction (Routledge, 2015). See also Miriam Fernández Santiago and Cristina M. Gámez-Fernández, ed., Representing Vulnerabilities in Contemporary Literature (Routledge, 2023).
25 See among others Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter (Duke University Press, 2009); Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, ed., New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics (Duke University Press, 2010); Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin, New Materialisms: Interviews and Cartographies (Open Humanities Press, 2012); Anna Hickey-Moody and Tara Page, ed., Art, Pedagogy, Cultural Resistance: New Materialisms (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015).
26 Rita Felski, Hooked: Art and Attachment (University of Chicago Press, 2020).
27 Martin Gregersen and Tobias Skiveren, Den Materielle Drejning. Natur, Krop og Teknologi i (Nyere) Dansk Litteratur (Syddansk Universitets Forlag, 2016).
28 See among many others Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh University Press, 2004); Teresa Brennan, The Transmission of Affect (Cornell University Press, 2004); Brian Massumi, “The Autonomy of Affect,” Cultural Critique, Part II, no. 31 (1995): 83–109. For a framework of “becoming” from where both new materialist and affect theory draws a lot of its inspiration see Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987); Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (University of Minnesota Press, 1983).
29 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Duke University Press, 2002). See also Rita Felski, The Uses of Literature (Blackwell, 2008).
30 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford University Press, 2005).
31 Rita Felski, The Uses of Literature, 81.
32 In an interview with Danish newspaper Politiken the author mentions this concept as an inspiration: Birgitte Kjær, “Anmelderrost forfatter er flyttet til Møn: ‘Nu drømmer jeg om at skrive mange bøger, at skrive enormt mange bøger. Men jeg ved ikke, om jeg kan leve af det’,” Politiken, December 18, 2022. https://politiken.dk/kultur/boger/art9090828/%C2%BBNudr%C3%B8mmer-jeg-om-at-skrive-mangeb%C3%B8ger-at-skrive-enormt-mange-b%C3%B8ger (accessed August 14, 2025).
33 “Parfumen sagde først blomst, med en klag der hang imellem rose og viol. Men så var der pludselig cigarkasse og cedertræ, der gjorde at sødmen fra blomsterne ikke fik overtaget, men ramte en slags barsk væg, en grænse. Duften var ikke tør, men glinsede med noget flydende friskt, der fik den noter til at gløde som lys gennem et vindue I tågen. Og midt I det hele fornemmede jeg pludselig en ravn, der sad og skuede tilsyneladende uden frygt,” Pernille Abd-El Dayem, Omsorgsdage, 40.
34 “Parfumerne på hylderne var støvede og ikke kendte mærker. De duftede af noget, jeg kendte. Jeg fik vage, men dejlige associationer, vasketøj, harpiks, vindblæst hud. Og så pludselig var der en som skilte sig ud. Den duftede af noget jeg kendte, men ikke havde duftet før. En ravn, jeg havde set tidligere I en telefonmast, dukkede op igen og igen, når jeg snusede til pipetten. Den sorte fugl der hvilede i telefonmasten. Hvilede og så mod andre forbindelser. Jeg må have reageret på en særlig måde, da jeg duftede ravnen, for ekspedienten bevægede sig hen mod mig. Du har fundet din sjæleduft! Hvad? En sjæleduft er den, der åbner én op, forklarede hun.” Pernille Abd-El Dayem, Omsorgsdage, 42.
35 “Jacky står bøjet over køkkenvasken nu. Der er pludselig et knæk i hende. Det er ved at blive forår. Æbleblomsterne driver, svæver snart forbi derude igen, som spredte gazeller på savannen. Foråret Hege blev født kunne dét virkelig få mælken til at løbe. Synet af de svævende blomster og deres duft, men også at Jacky sammenlignede dem med gazeller. Noget der mindede om noget andet, i det hele taget, fik hendes bryster til at spændes, et fiskeskelet i et nedfaldent hullet blad. Sådan en forårsmorgen kunne hun let levere over 200 ml, hvis hun fulgte blomsterne og malkede ud, mens hun stadig sad i sengen og så igen lidt senere.” Abd-El Dayem, Omsorgsdage, 51.
36 “En lun og syntetisk luft stødes ud af skydedørene ved Føtex, den blander sig med vinden, der puster Jacky forbi cafeen Kaffekilden, får greb i hende og genner hende nænsomt ind. Hun sætter hælene i. Men hun er allerede gennem porten. Varerne emmer. En solcreme på hylden dufter allerede fra huden på en fjern ferie. Jacky holder forskellige øreringe op ved siden af sit ansigt. Hun bukker sig ned over det lille spejl på standeren. En syntetisk duft fra tøjet, plastemballagen blander sig med den søde duft af frikadeller fra slagterafdelingen.” Abd-El Dayem, Omsorgsdage, 62.
37 “Når Cecil er dernede på pladsen og har drukket lidt af kaffen, kan hun få en fornemmelse af at være afbalanceret. Det giver alligevel en ro at få åbnet hånden helt og holde om noget varmt. Så er pladsen en zenhave. Hun kan se fire af de fem bænke/blokke. Lige meget hvor hun sætter sig, er den ene gemt, og det giver håb. En fabelskov i et måneland.” Abd-El Dayem, Omsorgsdage, 71.
38 Jens Kramshøj Flinker, “Den skandinaviske cli-fi”; Gregers Andersen, Climate Fiction and Cultural Analysis.
39 As Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin reminds us, it is the sensuous experience of the more-than-human that art holds a primary potential for providing, not factual knowledge. Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin, ed., Art in the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2015).
40 Jens Kramshøj Flinker, “Den skandinaviske cli-fi,” 42.
41 Another distinction in my argument compared to the mentioned climate fiction research is that the morethan- human awareness or “ecological bildung” I point to is not limited to ideas of landscape-informed nature such as plants or trees but can be any non-human being or phenomenon, such as scents or concrete.
42 The insight that these literary works cultivate a tender relation between the characters and the more-thanhuman cannot be separated from my postcritical reading method. It will always be a characteristic of this method that its interpretations are affected by what identifications the reader has had with the text. Here it is especially important to point out since I connect my analysis to a normative point about more-than-human awareness.
43 Sophie Wennerschied, “At kigge ind i et mørkt spejl. Fremtidsangst i Jonas Eikas Efter solen,” in Angst i Dansk Litteratur, ed. Markus Floris Christensen and Anders Ehlers Dam (Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2023).
44 “Rory havde en måde at være i lejligheden på uden hende, hele tiden i gang med at drage omsorg for et eller andet, som jeg virkelig godt kunne lide ham for. Han flyttede nænsomt rundt på møbler og tøj, tørrede krummer af, redte seng og luftede ud. Vandede planter med en spray og nulrede blade mellem to fingre, talte pengene og bestemte omhyggeligt hvilken suppe han ville lave i dag, og hvilke varer han så var nødt til at stjæle.” Jonas Eika, Efter solen, 110.
45 “Tøjbunkerne, fodkulde og knasterne i gulvet; duften af Rorys suppe, det flossede hul i væggen, Rory, hans fugleagtige krop i køkkenet, jeg suger det alt sammen og rummer det i min vidtstrakte mave.” Jonas Eika, Efter solen, 114.
46 “[…] vi forsøgte altid at åbne og forlænge nydelsen, via hænder og mund, tværs over madrasserne, ud gennem værelset, op og ovenud af bygningen. Imens toget hvinede igennem hvert tiende minut. Vandglassene klirrede på natbordet. Lejligheden bugnede rødt af varme mod aftenens blåsorte rundtomkring. Luften var gennemhullet af trafik i alle retninger, op til satellitten og tilbage igen. Nogen råbte, satte i løv efter en anden, hey, du! Biler gassede op og huggede bremserne i for foden af sengen.” Jonas Eika, Efter solen, 112.
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